down due to injury (Kittle didn’t play in the loss to Seattle, McCaffrey is still getting back to 100%, Aiyuk is out for the season with a torn ACL, and Samuel has missed time with injury/sickness), the offense just hasn’t felt like they’ve been able to hit the easy buttons as often as they’ve been able to.
Take this play against Seattle, for example. Although San Francisco is a ways away from the end zone, you normally expect McCaffrey to make someone miss and get more than five yards. He’s running an option route and goes to the space, but once he’s there, doesn’t make anyone miss.
Compare this to 2023, where McCaffrey is running an option route again and has leverage to the outside and is able to turn this into a big positive gain. I’m not saying McCaffrey has lost a step, but the entire team’s inability to hit big on plays after the catch this season has made the margins a bit smaller this season.
For years, the San Francisco 49ers have been able to reload their defense after losing coordinators and quality players to injury or free agency. This year it hasn’t been the same case. Their defense has gone through major upheaval and “brain drain” on the defensive side of the ball that it’s finally taking a hit on the unit’s success. They’re currently 12th in defensive EPA per play allowed and 17th in Success Rate allowed, but those are both major steps back from being at or near the top of the league as we’re used to seeing them. The constant upheaval at the coordinator spot, going from Robert Saleh, to Demeco Ryans, to Steve Wilks to now Nick Sorensen and Brandon Staley crafting the defense has taken this well coached unit to one that makes a bit more mistakes than we’re used to seeing.
On top of that, the ability to rebuild and reload the defensive roster has taken some hits. This is their 2023 roster, via ESPN’s Bill Barnwell, and the amount of snaps they’ve played for the team in 2024. At some point the trend of always losing players has to take effect, and it looks like it has for the Niners.
A major sticking point has been their inability to get pressure outside of Nick Bosa. When Bosa is on the field, the Niners’ pressure rate is 35.4%, which would tie them with the Minnesota Vikings for 10th in the entire league. Without Bosa it drops to 28%, putting them in between the Arizona Cardinals and Jacksonville Jaguars, who are 29th and 30th in the league, respectively.
The motley crew of Leonard Floyd, Yetur Gross-Matos and Robert Beal haven’t been consistent enough to provide consistent pop next to Bosa, and it’s making their defense suffer. They also simply aren’t good enough against the run this year, which is more of a teambuilding thing than anything else. They’re 22nd in Rushing Success Rate allowed and 20th in EPA/rush allowed and even lower last year, both major drops from being second in both categories in 2021. They’ve struggled to find a true nose tackle after DJ Jones left in free agency (although rookie DT Evan Anderson has helped out in that area), and with the consistent brain drain starting to come through, they don’t have as much ability to overcome it this season. While the Niners’ offense has felt snakebitten by injury, their defense feels like some flaws in teambuilding coming home to roost.
Now, I’m not going to be the one to doom and gloom the Niners. It’s hard to say that a team with Kyle Shanahan as their head playcaller and the talent on offense is going to falter to end this season. However, they have games on the road against Green Bay, Arizona, Buffalo and Miami, along with home tilts against Detroit and the Los Angeles Rams to end the season. If they’re going to make the playoffs, it’ll have to be going through a murderer’s row of opponents to wrap this season up.
Even though it’s not all doom and gloom, it does feel like this is the final ride for this version of the Niners. And if it is, it’s less a grand finale, and more of a sad swan song.
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